Act of Betrayal (4 page)

“Went to the Youth Fair and a couple of concerts, the groups he liked, just to look for him in the crowds. Did those alone. My wife couldn't handle seeing all those kids.”

We stared at each other, silent for a long moment. “Is there a dental chart?”

“It's available.” He spoke without emotion. “The family dentist knows Charles is missing. He has good teeth but he had a filling and some work, an enamel cap on a front tooth. Chipped it when he was twelve, in a spill he took water skiing. Had fliers printed up with his picture and description, posted 'em in laundromats, supermarkets, everyplace they'd let me. That's about it, except for our church group. They've been holding prayer vigils.”

“Publicity usually works faster.” I sounded more cynical than I intended. I thought of the private detectives, the psychics all smelling money, vultures moving in for the kill. “Why didn't you come to the paper sooner?”

His laughter held no humor. “Think I didn't try?” His scowl connected his bushy eyebrows. “Your security wouldn't even let me in the building without an appointment with somebody upstairs. When I called the newsroom some editor blew me off, said too many kids are missing in Miami, when you write about one, you have to print 'em all in the paper. Told me to buy an ad.”

“That's ridiculous!” I exploded. Had to be Gretchen, I thought. It sounded like her. When I started at the paper, anybody could walk in off the street or call the city desk and speak to a reporter. What the hell happened? News gatherers in air-conditioned offices are now insulated from the real world by security, voice mail, and recordings. Editors in their ivory towers are blind to the realities of the street. Any two-bit terrorist could infiltrate the building, but the average citizen jerked around by the system and in need of help is stymied by security. I swallowed the frustration and disappointment I felt at the profession I love.

“Not many children are missing this long,” I assured Randolph quietly. “This is a news story.”

“They did put it in the
Gables Times Guide.”
His hands shook slightly as he presented me with a clipping from the small weekly. Folded and unfolded so many times, it was now Scotch-taped together. A brief account accompanied by the school photo concluded with phone numbers, police and the family, to call with information.

Our society is so mobile. Victims and suspects can quickly be a thousand miles away. This huge county alone is bigger than Rhode Island and Delaware, most of it far out of a neighborhood weekly's circulation area.

“Any response?”

“Nothing to speak of. A few crank calls, claiming to have seen him, but nothing checked out. I try to do something every day,” he said. “I've been to the morgue, to the police station. I call the Adam Walsh center for missing and exploited children, go to the beach and playgrounds and show his picture. There's always somebody who's seen a boy who looks like him, but every time I track the kid down, it's another man's son, not mine.” He shoved back an unruly lock of hair with his scraped fist.

“Had he been grounded just before he left? Any family fights?”

“Nothing more than the usual teenage stuff. Nothing that would make him run.”

“What about sex and romance?”

“The boy was twelve and a half years old when he disappeared.” He emphasized the number.

“Hormones are raging at that age.”

He shook his head. “He hadn't been out on his first date yet. He was just learning how to dance.”

“No sex, drugs, rap, or heavy metal.” I was thinking aloud.

“That's why it's so bewildering.” He put his head in his hands.

A frustrated employee interrupted with a problem. An expensively dressed woman customer, driving a late-model luxury car, was insisting they accept an outdated coupon for five dollars off her bill.

Randolph pointed out the clearly printed expiration date. She argued shrilly until he offered five dollars from his own pocket. Shamelessly, she took him up on it and drove off grinning.

“We run ninety, a hundred cars a day through here,” he explained. “Repeat business is our lifeblood. It's worth it for customer goodwill.”

I drove back to the
News
in a snit. Pissed off at people who prey on the wounded, annoyed at
News
security, and prepared to urge them to call me or some other reporter every time a stranger is seeking help. No uniforms were visible in the lobby. The receptionist said our security chief and his men were busy hunting down an irate reader at large in the building.

I rooted for the reader.

Apparently, a phone number in a daily display ad was transposed and calls for phone sex were going to the readers home instead. When he pointed out the error, he was told that it's against policy to take corrections over the telephone. He called production. No one there was authorized to make changes, but somebody eventually promised to correct the problem. Nobody did. The ad kept running. Sex seekers kept calling.

Furious, the victim threatened to drive all the way from Homestead to throw a monkey wrench into the printing press. The first edition had hit the street, the number uncorrected, and a new wave of sex calls began. Now it was too late to correct the ad before Monday. All the weekend editions, more than a million newspapers, would carry his phone number.

When a stranger carrying a wrench showed up at the employees' entrance, a preoccupied security guard had waved him in. Now the manhunt was on.

Right on, I thought, wearing a smile to my desk. I had become a reporter to tweak, expose, and battle bureaucracy. How the hell did the enemy become us?

Wally Soams, the Gables missing-persons detective, was in this time.

“I always pegged that kid as a runaway, he offered.

“What made you think that?”

“Well, you know, kids that age.” He sounded slightly irritated that I had asked. “We get 'em every day. Half the time they come home and the parents don't even give you the courtesy of a call to let ya know. I don't even know some of 'em turned up until the mothers call to report 'em missing again.” He paused. “This is the kid who wuz hitchhiking on Lejeune, right?”

“No,” I said sharply. “He was on Garden on Fairway Island, cleaning boats for rich people. What did you do in this case?”

I heard him shuffling papers. “Entered it in the county computer,” he offered.

“Nice work.”

“What's with the attitude, Britt?” he demanded. “You know how shorthanded we are, what we're dealing with.”

“I just spent the afternoon with the father,” I said. “How would you feel left in limbo for two and a half years, not knowing if your only child is dead or alive?”

“Here we go,” Soams said, apparently locating his supplementaries on the case. “Okay. Yeah, this is the one. We had some reported sightings.”

“Where?”

“Let's see, there was a story in some little throwaway and there were some circulars posted and … kid who went to school with him said he was pretty sure he saw Charles Randolph shooting baskets over at St. Patrick's playground the weekend after he disappeared. Then a woman, a former neighbor of the Randolphs, said she thought she saw Charles standing in front of the Pizza Hut at Dadeland Mall.”

“When?”

“Same weekend.”

“Wally, they're more than twenty-five miles apart. Any true sightings?”

“Some kid came forward after a PA announcement at his school, says he saw Charles at a video game parlor at Northside. Says he chased after him and the kid threatened him with big trouble if he mentioned seeing him.”

“What do you think?”

“Ehhh, maybe a combo of being too eager to help, and an overactive imagination. At the time, though, it seemed like the kid could be out there playing cat and mouse. Now … who knows?”

“Anything lately?”

“Nah. This one's been gathering dust. We get new cases every day.”

“He didn't run away,” I said accusingly. “What happened?”

“All I know is a kid is walking down Garden in broad daylight, then poufff! You tell me. You got a good imagination. Could be he's some smart-ass still out there playing cat and mouse.”

I made a derisive sound.

“Or,” he continued, “for all I know the father walloped the hell out of the kid for sassing ‘im, hit 'im too hard, buried his mistake in the backyard, and then reported him missing. It's been done before, ya know.”

“Sure,” I said. “That explains why he came to the
News
looking for help. Explains why they've given thousands of dollars to phony psychics and Pls trying to find their son.” What I really wanted to tell Soams was that he couldn't find a fish at Sea World and was stealing his paycheck.

“Hey,” he said affably, “if you turn up anything, let me know.”

Cassie Randolph answered on the second ring.

“My husband said you might call. Thank you, Ms. Montero, for what you're doing.”

“Well, I haven't done anything yet.”

“We need to bring Charles home.” Her soft voice had a razor edge. “Some people, even friends, say we should accept the fact that he's gone, that we'll never see him again—but it's not true. He's alive. Mothers know these things. He's out there somewhere and he needs us. We have to find him before it's too late.”

“If he's out there,” I foolishly promised, “we'll find him. Somebody must know something.”

So I got carried away, but I meant every word, and we did have a good shot at it.
The News's
circulation is more than half a million. Wire services, radio, and TV pick up our stories, circulating them even more widely. If I reported this well enough, we probably could bring Charles home, one way or the other. I hoped her maternal instincts were right. I prefer happy endings.

The doctor whose boat he had cleaned on his last job was out of town. The housekeeper was new. Vera Verela was in New York cutting an album. I caught her at the Westbury Hotel.

Her memory needed jogging, but once she knew what I was talking about, she was effusive and quotable. “That beauuutiful boy,” she trilled. “So quiet, so polite, and so hardworking. He still has not been found?
¡Dios mio! ¿Qui pasa en Miami?
People don't just disappear.”

“This one did.”

“How terrible for his parents. Tell them I pray for them and their beautiful son.”

“Did he ever say anything to you about wanting to go somewhere or talk about anything that was troubling him?”

“Britt, I never really spoke to the boy. He comes once a week to clean my boat. I call it the
Sex Sea.”
She laughed, an earthy, show-biz sort of eruption. “Once I was sunbathing by the pool. He opened the gate, was afraid to look, so shy, blushing.” She laughed again.

Juan Carlos Reyes was not as effusive. “Have they found who killed Alex Aguirre?”

“No,” I said, “this is something else.”

“So, Ms. Montero, I am sure you are aware that I am not on such excellent terms with
The Miami News.
Have you been instructed to call me every time you write a story?”

“Not at all. I'm just a reporter, on the police beat, calling about the disappearance of Charles Randolph.”

“Who?”

I reminded him. “Oh, that one. I was not aware the young man is still missing. I remember speaking to the father some time ago.”

“What was your impression of the boy? Do you have a theory?”

“Ms. Montero, forgive me. As you must know, my interests are international, and I am deeply involved with many matters of importance. I confess I have not given this matter a thought in three or four years.”

“He's been missing for two. Two and a half to be exact.”

“You see,” he said abruptly, “my contact with the young man was limited. My houseman hired the boy as an employee to perform odd jobs on the
Libertad.
If the young man appeared at my door at this moment, I would not have the slightest hint who he was. I will instruct Wilfredo to call you if he recalls anything of importance.”

The brush-off was polite but obvious, and I still had no quote worth using.

“Any message for the parents?”

“Why would I…” he began. “Ah.” He sighed knowingly. “A sound bite for your story.”

“That's TV,” I said, smiling. “I need a quote.”

He paused for a moment. “I know what it is like to lose all that is dear to you. I lost my country. We can only hope that one day the boy returns, safe and sound, and that Cuba is soon free.”

“How's that?” he asked.

I could have lived without Cuba as a metaphor, but it was usable. Though half Cuban myself, it exasperates me when Cuban-Americans relate everything to Castro.

I worked late on the story, dubbed it “one of Miami's most baffling missing persons cases,” and used Soams's “pouff” quote. Gretchen had gone home, which was my good fortune. Bobby Tubbs was in the slot and needed a strip story for the local page, either mine or Ryan Battle's report on the county's classroom shortage. I wasn't ashamed to lobby for the spot.

“You're sure they won't find this kid before morning?” Tubbs asked anxiously.

“I promise,” I said, crossing my fingers. Stranger things have happened. I definitely wanted Charles Randolph found, but not until my story landed on lawns in the morning. If he chose tonight to turn up and made the paper look foolish, it would be impossible to sell the next missing persons story to the city desk. “It'll be a great follow on Monday if we get some leads,” I urged.

He bought it. Primo space, the Sunday paper, widest circulation of the week, when readers relax over coffee and their newspaper.

Home alone on a Saturday night with a frozen pizza, I was content. Lottie was out on the town with the Polish Prince, but I felt no trace of envy. I swept Billy Boots off his furry feet and hugged him, buoyed by anticipation. Miami's good readers never let me down. Somebody out there had to know something. One solid lead, that's all I needed. Reporters are often the last hope in a world full of red tape and bureaucracy. That is one of the joys of journalism.